I have recently come to the realization that I have let our founding fathers down, and so has this entire country.

Through either our active participation or our silence, we have allowed their legacy to be erased, and a revisionist view to be propped in place of what the founders created for us.

The revisionists tell us that the founders were not Christians. Revisionists try to create a past that never happened, and we have sat by and watched our nation become something it was never intended to be.

The Constitution required its leaders to protect the government from enemies “both foreign and domestic,” and yet both parties are capitulating that responsibility every day.

Why am I so fired up?

Let’s take a look at the revolutionaries who created a responsible republic and what has happened.

First, our founders were doing very well in the British commonwealth. They had access to raw materials that the world wanted. The economy was booming, and they wanted for little.

But theirs was not simply a life of comfort but a sense of purpose and dignity.

In the grand scheme of things, the British trying to get repaid for defending the colonies with a few taxes, was not that big of a deal.

But to the founding fathers, imposing any tax without the people’s consent was tyranny. To them, it was the same as placing every man, woman and child in the colonies in shackles.

Over this fairly benign issue, these people pledged, their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honors.

But our leaders have failed to explain the value of freedom, and our government continues to grow.

While debating the cause for independence, some who questioned if being independent would actually lead to freedom. “What is the difference between one tyrant three thousand miles away, and three thousand tyrants one mile away,” They would argue.

They understood that freedoms could be limited by people right here just as easily as by the king.

We are proving those people right every time we raise the debt ceiling, every time we offer a new program that takes from one group to give to another, and every time one of our Constitutional rights, such as the right to bear arms, is limited out of fear of its abuse, then we have all accepted servitude.

Freedom is allowing someone else to insult you, and you to insult them.

Freedom means that every left wing or right wing fringe group that wants to take up some zany cause has the right to do so.

But just this past week, we have seen a city in New York remove the “Don’t Tread on Me” flag from a local Armory because they see it as a symbol of the Tea Party movement.

Another town in New York assigned students to write an essay defending Hitler.

We have seen a rise in the gay movement, but if you take a position against that lifestyle, you are an extremist bigot.

To the founders, even if you were a bigot, it was not illegal or censored in the United States of America.

That’s what freedom is.

The tolerance movement is only tolerant of views it likes.

If your view does not fit the mold, you are intolerant.

Even intolerant people have a place in the United States of America. That’s how the nation was founded. The Constitutional framers did not create a nation only to protect the popular views, but to protect the ability of the minority view to have its say, too.

But Richard Nixon said it best when he referred to the massive Silent Majority of America that believes in God, family values and responsible government.

But that silence is now being used against the very foundation of the nation.

The media has been hijacked by only one acceptable view. They define what is considered tolerable and what is not by skewing the story.

The major news outlets have chosen a side, and when a truly fair news outlet simply presents the facts, they are labeled a right-wing rag. While Fox News is accused of leaning right, CNN, NBC, ABC and CBS lean left, and this is considered balanced?

It’s not. We all know it, and yet we sit back and allow the voters to receive biased information from news outlets that no longer care about the Constitution. They are advocates for a view rather than dedicated to providing the information.

These newsrooms do not reflect the make-up of America. Hollywood does the same thing. Try to find a sit-com that doesn’t have a major gay influence in it, and yet gays make up less than 1 percent, but ABC programming features 5.2 percent gay characters in their programming. CBS is at 2.8 percent.

More than 70 percent of Americans identify themselves as Christians, but other than Cindy Brady kneeling by her bed to pray (in 1971), when have you seen characters actually displaying their Christian faith on the shows we watch?

The Patriots of 1776 fought for something, and today we stand for nothing. The Silent Majority has capitulated. Those who founded this nation would not recognize it today, and they would be asking why you didn’t care enough to stand up for freedom, or to defend against these insurrections of liberty?

How would you answer?

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The High Plains Daily Leader and Southwest Daily Times are published Sunday through Friday and reaches homes throughout the Liberal, Kansas retail trade zone. The Leader & Times is the official newspaper of Seward County, USD No. 480, USD No. 483 and the cities of Liberal and Kismet. The Leader & Times is a member of the Liberal Chamber of Commerce, the Kansas Press Association, the National Newspaper Association and the Associated Press.

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